The Best Scores Of 2011

Who’d have thought that Danny Elfman would do one of his most inspired movie scores for a movie that didn’t really exist- let alone several at the same time? It’s this inventive, stylistic bounty that’s made me give a deserved mulligan to the Elfman soundtracks that you can only see live on stage at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood- home to Cirque Du Soleil’s movies-as-a-circus show “Iris.” With the music sending Cirque’s death-defying performers over audiences’ heads, trampolining off buildings, and contorting themselves into pretzels, Elfman’s work gives new meaning to being “in synch” with these moving human pictures. Ranging from furiously percussive symphonies to music box bells, solo pianos, syncopated voices and swing jazz, “Iris” not only traverses the amazing history of Elfman music with sections reminiscent of “Edward Scissorhands,” “Nightbreed” and “Dick Tracy,” but that of Hollywood scoring itself, with Elfman doing his own spins of “West Side Story”’s finger-snapping jazz to the raging dance ritual of “King Kong.” At once tightly controlled and spur-of-the-second, “Iris” brings out a new sense of invention and freedom from a composer who’s already one of Hollywood’s most inventive performers. “Iris” is a musical high wire act that Elfman pulls off with tremendous energy, and one definitely worth seeing in person.